Rigorous but rollicking ... Purnell seeks nobly to highlight Harriman’s involvement in public as well as private affairs ... The majority of biographies lose steam as the subject ages; Kingmaker gets a strong second wind with Harriman’s early talent spotting of Bill Clinton ... If Purnell’s prose sometimes lapses into breathlessness, who can blame her? Like her beloved horses, Harriman went through her days at full gallop, and it would be hard for even the most devoted stable mistress to keep up.
A feminist reclamation project, bent on producing a more respectful portrait than those found in two earlier books ... A thorough account of Harriman’s rise which also manages to be a brisk, twisty read ...Purnell has found plenty of people to talk to about their memories of Harriman, along with archival sources ... The section of Kingmaker devoted to its subject’s war years was, I found, the most riveting and revelatory ... Though Purnell contends here and there that Harriman was a woman of ideas, there’s not a whole lot to support that...and what glimpses we get of her policy commitments mark her as a fairly conventional centrist.
Churchill was no doubt delighted by reports from her pillow talk, but Purnell wildly overestimates Pamela’s centrality to the war effort...The author insists that all of Pamela’s love affairs were conducted with 'strategic purpose' and 'patriotic' intent, but this whole interpretation is oversold and underproved and sometimes ludicrously phrased ... Purnell’s grasp of recent American history is shaky, but her case for Harriman’s impact on Democratic politics is much stronger than the one she makes for her subject’s World War II significance ... Purnell tells a brisk tale, but her book lacks the authority and judgment of Sally Bedell Smith’s Reflected Glory, the Pamela biography that appeared in 1996. For all the surface sparkle and erotic commotion to Pamela Harriman’s life, any of her biographers has to cope with the peculiar deadness inside such an apparently vital subject, one whose remorseless, mechanical nature still renders her, even at this long remove, more repellent than fascinating.
Purnell convincingly turns a comic-book enchantress into a sensualist operator, equally fluent in U.N. Security Council resolutions, table linens, and oral sex ... Purnell marshals a lot of sympathy for Pamela, but in the end hers is a story of old money, amorality, and soft power. One of her fans was Bill Clinton, who speaks on the final page: 'Did she have a good time living? Yes, she did. Good for her.''
A feminist reclamation project, filled mostly with admiration rather than judgment. Purnell succeeds in conveying Harriman’s genuine political skills and her interest in using the insider knowledge she gathered, whether whispered in bed or brandished at one of her dinner parties. There is something arguably ruthless in her nature that Purnell doesn’t entirely deal with, but she has brought her subject out from between the sheets and enabled her to stand in her elegant clothes, coiffed hair, and jewels in the naked light of day.
Sympathetic, well-researched, busily peopled but faintly exhausting biography, which will test even the keenest appetite for stories of ambition and the will to power.
Like the best biographies, Kingmaker has moments when the story sails along, vibrantly evoking Jazz Age Manhattan, Montmartre, or postwar London; the book is riveting, and, given its subject, at times salacious. Purnell’s confident voice and her citations go a long way to create an air of objectivity amidst a complex history that is not without scandal. There is a cinematic quality to the biography, which reads like a novel—sweeping, swelling ... To step into this five-hundred-page-plus saga is to open the door to a hothouse of opulence and ambition, of Sturm und Drang that can feel exhausting. Yet as we hurtle toward the 2024 presidential election...I can think of no better time to pick up the well-told story of one of the twentieth century’s most powerful female kingmakers.
Purnell creates a vibrant portrait of an influential political player in her native England and her adopted America ... Meticulous research informs a captivating biography.
